Article on ‘The Significance of Communal Religious Freedom for Liberal Democracy’ in the International Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Society

Posted onSeptember 7, 2018|Comments Off on Article on ‘The Significance of Communal Religious Freedom for Liberal Democracy’ in the International Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Society

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

‘Leading US scholar of constitutional interpretation Michael Paulsen has developed an interesting theory of religious freedom called “The Priority of God.” Paulsen distinguishes, first of all, a liberal conception of religious freedom, according to which it is widely assumed that religious truth exists in a society and the state is tolerant towards various faiths and other traditions. The US, however, has developed in the direction of a modern conception of religious freedom, which no longer recognizes religious truth although the state remains tolerant. Moreover, still according to Paulsen, several European countries have adopted a postmodern conception of religious freedom. This conception does not only no longer recognize religious truth, but also implies a considerably less tolerant state, as secularism becomes the established “religion.” This view paradoxically resembles the preliberal stance of religious intolerance out of the conviction that religious truth exists. In response to such developments, the current article makes a case for the classical liberal position with respect to religious freedom. A liberal religious freedom conception forms the best guarantee that societal institutions will be able to fulfill their constitutional functions of a check on the government and as “seedbeds of virtue.”’

About me

Hans-Martien ten Napel, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he is also Research Fellow of the Leiden Law School and Affiliated Member of the Center for the Study of Political Parties and Representation. In addition, he is a Member of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research. Before his transfer to the law faculty, he taught at a Department of Political Science and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA).

He teaches the Bachelor of Laws elective course on the Law of Democracy and a Master of Laws elective course on Comparative Constitutional Law and served as a coach on the extracurricular Leiden Leadership Programme. In addition, he is currently co-supervising three Ph.D. projects.

In 2014 he was awarded a Research Fellowship in Legal Studies at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, NJ, which enabled him to be in full-time residence at CTI for the academic year 2014-2015. In 2017 he received a ‘seed money grant for frontier research’ from the Leiden profile area Interaction Between Legal Systems.

His work has appeared in European Constitutional Law Review, European Public Law, Journal of Interreligious Studies, Journal of Markets and Morality, Muslim World Journal of Human Rights and Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. He was also co-editor and co-author of two recent volumes, Regulating Political Parties: European Democracies in Comparative Perspective (2014) and The Powers That Be. Rethinking the Separation of Powers (2015).

Since 2015, he is a member of the editorial board of the Tijdschrift voor Religie, Recht en Beleid(Journal of Religion, Law, and Policy). In 2017, he published, as the fruit of his research fellowship, the monograph Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To Be Fully Human (Routledge).

Grateful to Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, the Founder and Senior Director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRFA), for generously including my recent book on Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom, To Be Fully Human in this review of recent books on … Continue reading →

Pleased to announce that the editorial board of Routledge have decided to publish my book Constitutionalism, Democracy and Religious Freedom. To Be Fully Human (2017) in paperback. They anticipate publication in March 2019. Preview PDF here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317236917?fbclid=IwAR0aiJiTnvOvWAv57HCS1vkwLAiNNTp1BU96knPp-GC4MGxh5P6DB82JzWw A Media Review … Continue reading →

I look forward to participating in the third session of the St. John’s Law School Center for Law and Religion’s Tradition Project, “The Value of Tradition in the Global Context,” in Rome this week. ‘December 12, 2018 9.00 – 13.00 … Continue reading →

‘Champaign, Ill., USA – 16 November 2018 – The Religion in Society Research Network is pleased to announce the selection of “The Significance of Communal Religious Freedom for Liberal Democracy,” Hans-Martien ten Napel, as the winner of the International Award … Continue reading →